Imagining the future where regulations of social media platforms didn't end harassment, extremism, or disinformation, and only made the platforms stronger
The way we regulated social media platforms didn't end harassment, extremism or disinformation. It only gave them more power and made the problem worse. Tweets: @javierpallero , @dangillmor , @xor , @mediamorphis , @cagoldberglaw , @susanthesquark , @daniellecitron , @yashalevine , @connorwa , @michaeldolan , and @evanselinger Tweets: Javier Pallero / @javierpallero : This piece by @doctorow sums up what is wrong with proposed regulations of big tech to make them liable for “harmful content”. The dystopia is around the corner but we are just in time to stop it. https://www.nytimes.com/... via @aracalacana Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : By @doctorow: “Our first mistake was giving the platforms the right to decide who could speak and what they could say. Our second mistake was giving them the duty to make that call, a billion times a day.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Parker Higgins / @xor : Cory @Doctorow has a gift for “predicting the present,” and he's in rare form in his new op-ed from the future https://www.nytimes.com/... Dwayne Winseck / @mediamorphis : .@doctorow on why treating platforms as publishers and regulating them as such is a really, really bad idea. A note from the future to the legions calling for just that. https://www.nytimes.com/... Carrie A. Goldberg / @cagoldberglaw : Proud to be part of the “unholy and unlikely coalition” aimed at destroying cda230. @nytopinion, plz allow me to write the counterstory of the hell in ten years if the universe's most omnipotent and omniscient industry remains immune from liability https://www.nytimes.com/... Susan Fowler / @susanthesquark : In this week's Op-Ed From the Future, Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) imagines a future in which we regulate the social media platforms in a way that only gives them more power : https://www.nytimes.com/... Danielle Citron / @daniellecitron : Dear @nytopinion, I'd love for you to feature a nuanced response to the fallacious notion that dealing with Section 230 is an all or nothing proposition for law and for speech. @benjaminwittes and I have written about this—here to respond. https://www.nytimes.com/... Yasha Levine / @yashalevine : Too bad the @nytimes didn't make @doctorow's conflict of interest explicit: his former employer, @EFF, is an astroturf lobbyist for Big Tech—an industry that will fight to keep 230 to the death. Carrie is on the right side of history. Cory is on the side of Bezos and Zuck. https://twitter.com/... Connor Anderson / @connorwa : @doctorow has been fighting this fight for almost 20 years. He knows what he's talking about and he's a damn good writer. READ THIS! https://www.nytimes.com/... Michael Dolan / @michaeldolan : “Democracies aren't strengthened when a professional class gets to tell us what our opinions are allowed to be.” Powerful opinion by @doctorow https://www.nytimes.com/... Evan Selinger / @evanselinger : I practically jumped for joy when @nytimes kicked off its new series “Op-Ed From The Future” w/ the amazing Ted Chiang! Now @doctorow enters the genre by imagining “an unholy & unlikely coalition” damaging democracy by getting section 230 of CDA amended. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Cory Doctorow's 'From the Future' op-ed lands mid-fight over Section 230: a coalition including Marriott, Disney, and IBM was already pushing to limit the law's liability shield, betting that publisher-style rules would discipline Facebook and Google. Doctorow's counterargument is that treating platforms as publishers does the opposite — compliance costs and filtering obligations become a moat only the incumbents can afford.
The piece also sketches what he thinks should replace liability: structural remedies rather than content policing, a line later picked up by advocates of mandated interoperability and by critics arguing Facebook criticism must move beyond moderation entirely toward building public cultural institutions.
First-order effects
- Startups and small platforms bear the immediate cost: if harmful-content liability attaches at the distribution layer, every upload requires pre-screening capacity that only Big Tech balance sheets can fund, consolidating the market Doctorow says regulation aims to fix.
- The corporate coalition seeking Section 230 limits gains an articulate opponent — free-expression and digital-rights voices cited in the piece (Citron, Goldberg, Gillmor among the amplifying tweets) now have a concrete dystopian scenario to argue against publisher treatment.
Second-order effects
- Regulators looking for leverage over platform power are pushed toward non-content remedies: the interoperability-mandate argument in the related coverage exists precisely because liability rules fail on their own terms, giving antitrust-adjacent tools a stronger case.
- Platforms' own behavior shifts under threat of liability — heavier automated filtering and takedown bias, which serves incumbent interests twice by raising rivals' costs and by letting platforms present moderation as regulatory compliance rather than editorial choice.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the policy conversation migrates from 'who is liable for speech' to 'who controls the pipes' — access-control and interface-neutral governance frameworks replacing content adjudication as the locus of platform regulation.
- The deeper structural bet, per the related coverage, is institutional: sustained investment in human-curated and publicly accountable media as substitutes for platform-mediated discourse, rather than perpetual patching of Section 30-year-old liability law.
The trend: Platform-governance debates are shifting from content-liability schemes that entrench incumbents toward structural remedies — interoperability, access rules, and public institutions — as the Section 230 consensus fractures.